


all you need to be

by kitsunerei88



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Loss, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Survivor Guilt, War, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:33:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25542142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsunerei88/pseuds/kitsunerei88
Summary: Madge Undersee survives the bombing of District 12. She’s not sure that she should have.Or: a portrait in survivor's guilt.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18
Collections: Every Woman 2020





	all you need to be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DesertVixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesertVixen/gifts).



She wasn’t supposed to have survived.

It was only luck that she did. She hadn’t been able to sleep, that was all. The insomnia had struck her more and more since the 74th Hunger Games, and more and more she found herself wandering out of doors at night. The Peacekeepers had caught her more than once, but she was the mayor’s daughter; they usually just nodded when she explained, and then they let her go. So, she wandered, through the town, through the green, along the fence that kept out the animals, until her mind quieted and she thought she could fall asleep.

Because she was awake, because she had been wandering, she hadn’t been home when the bombs fell.

It was more luck that she had fallen in with Gale Hawthorne and the other survivors, and she wondered still that they had accepted her. Not that all of them did—she was blonde, blue-eyed, wearing clothing properly made for the outdoors, while most of them had the dark hair and eyes of the Seam and only their night clothes and a coat. Almost none of the townsfolk had survived, only her, and she could almost see the questions in the survivors’ eyes.

_Why you? Why you, and not my brother, not my daughter, and not my son? Aren’t you one of them? Aren’t you the favoured of the Capitol, with enough to eat, enough money to live, enough privilege to escape the mines?_

Madge stared back, her mouth stubborn, and she hoped that her answers shone clearly through her blue eyes.

_My father is dead. My mother is dead. My own aunt, my mother’s twin, died in the 50 th Hunger Games, and I, too, have suffered._

She wonders if that’s enough.

* * *

In District 13, she is assigned to the sick ward. She likes it there, she thinks, because no one talks to her. No one bothers her there. No one asks why a blonde, blue-eyed town girl is in District 13 with the survivors of District 12.

Primrose Everdeen and Mrs. Everdeen work with her. They’re blonde and blue-eyed too—only Katniss inherited the dark hair and hazel eyes of her father—but no one looks askance at them. They’re the family of the Mockingjay, and no one would dare. When Madge is with them, when she works, Madge can forget out how out of place she feels in District 13. She can run from the persistent feeling of guilt that follows her wherever she goes, she can run from the eyes and the whispers and the overwhelming sense that she should not be here.

She should not have survived.

She misses her mother. She misses her father. She misses her bedroom, with her books, in District 12, and she misses everyone she’s lost. She’s not Gale, who takes to the military discipline of District 13 like a duck takes to water—she isn’t Katniss, who is welcomed as a hero, and she isn’t Prim or Mrs. Everdeen, who are welcomed as the family of a hero.

She is only Madge Undersee. She is no one.

* * *

“Madge.” The voice that calls her name is a familiar one, low and stern. She looks up from where she has been taking inventory of the medical supplies. “Are you all right?”

Gale Hawthorne is more handsome in District 13 than he ever was at home, Madge thinks, though the thought is monotone, clinical, rather than appreciative. The plain green uniform fits as if it has been specially tailored to him and his muscles have filled out with the proper diet of District 13, but it is the spark of angry hope swirling around him that defines the new Gale, as opposed to the old. How the girls at school would have squealed and whispered to see him now!

But they were dead. Most of them were dead, and the few that had survived had a million other things to think about. Just like her.

“Gale,” she replies flatly, turning back to her inventory. “As good as anyone can be, I suppose.”

There is a long stretch of silence, filled only with the scratching of Madge’s pencil as she goes through the inventory. Gale doesn’t leave—she can feel him breathing in the empty ward behind her, where she stays as much as humanly possible. Either the sick ward, or her own lonely, cold, room. No family for her, so she lives alone with the ghosts of the dead.

“I wanted to check in on you,” Gale says, the soft sigh of shifting feet broadcasting his discomfort. “You—everyone else in District 12…”

“Everyone else from District 12 survived with someone,” Madge finishes for him, her voice brutal in its bluntness. “Everyone else from District 12 has a sister, a brother, a mother, a father. A neighbour, a friend. And there’s just me, and no one knows why I survived.”

“You survived for the same reason we all survived,” Gale snaps, sudden in sharp anger. “Luck. Sheer, dumb luck.”

Another pause, before Madge looks up to the older boy—a young man now, a man prepared for war. “It doesn’t feel that way,” she says quietly. “It never feels that way.”

Gale sags, the flash of anger gone in an instant in the face of her emptiness. “It doesn’t. But it is, and all we can do is fight.”

“I’m not a fighter,” Madge replies, turning away. “I never was.”

“But you are a survivor.” Gale takes a few steps towards her to rest one hand on her arm, where she’s holding a pencil still. “Maybe a survivor is all you need to be.”

**Author's Note:**

> DesertVixen: I'm not sure this is what you were looking for, but here it is! I would have liked to hint at a stronger Gale/Madge future relationship but rather failed. One of my favourite parts of The Hunger Games has always been the fact that it handled PTSD and trauma as well, so here is a take on the survivor's guilt that goes with it.


End file.
